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Tuesday, 22 March 2011

Imbalanced Blog Entry about Attack the Block

I'm not sure if anybody even notices but I do try to maintain an equipoise to my blogposts. It's not been easy over the past year with Adam being so charmingly accessible and Joe maintaing his haughty air of mystery but I like to think I've rarely mentioned one without the other.

The alien/hoodie lovestorm which took place in Texas over the last couple of weeks simply poleaxed me into a stupor of non-blogitude but I can't ride that colloid hydrogel forever so here's a lot of stuff about Joe's film. In a short while, I'll do something that barely mentions the elusive thing.

If you're new to this nonsense, I need to mention that I'm a spoiler-phobe and any review of Attack the Block I might link here is executed with the confidence I have in the source rather than an appraisal of the actual content. Furthermore, my decision to not capitalise 'the' in the film's title is not the product of an intimate discussion with the director. It just pleases my eye and softens the menace. Deal with it.

Deep respect to the tweeters who look after the British Independent Film Awards account for being right up there at the front with their Follow Friday last month.

Optimum Releasing are distributing this renagade capsule and I shall continue to praise them until they put my arse on a seat with a good view. They have programme notes and a link to another file with an extension name of .docx.docx.docx which immediately made an independently remote-functioning synapse of my brain mumble "Basement Jocx. ocx. ocx" but no matter. Said link will give you all the trailers in all the colours and all the sizes.

It would be rude to mention Optimum without including a link to Film4 and their latest article, without whose input this film would have been made on an even tighter budget, with far less red in it and virtually no ten minute 'specials' on their digital tv channel.

I'm going to say I am finding the marketing hoopla a bit of a conundrum and particularly testing.

More than two months before the film's release, the director himself was awkwardly plonked on the Film 2011 sofa in a position that required him to swing his neck back and forth like an umpire at Wimbledon. I mean, he was already being sick in his mouth before he got there. I am told that these clips were aired during the show.

That same day, in a 75 seater basement room in Soho, selected members of the press were embargoed right up and over the area.

With a click of his heels, Joe skidded out of Television Centre and onto a Los Angeles bound 'plane to join Edgar Wright for quality procrastination.

On the morning prior to the first public screening, The Hollywood Reporter broke the first of many trade paper missives. I'm particularly heartened to note their praise for young John Boyega.

The next weekend finally brought the premiere at South By Southwest in the Alamo Drafthouse and I straddled the delicate chasm between needing to know that Joe wasn't going to land in a crumpled heap and yet not absorbing any film specific information. I caught photos from people who watched the intro and links to Q & As that I'm still too resolved in unspoilerdom to watch properly. Here he is sporting his best hands on hips look that he probably learnt during his brief modelling career in Japan. There's another shot here.

Charles Gant's piece for Variety was the first review to hit the nets after the screening had finished. In fact, it was linked about twenty minutes before it went live immediately after the screening. It's behind a paywall.....one of the easiest paywalls to negotiate on the net but I didn't tell you that.

I'm not going to list too many more review links because Big Talk have collected the good ones on their post-premiere news page. Catherine Shoad at The Guardian has a view but all you really want to know is what Charlie thought of it. There's some more good reading stuff in here.

HeyUGuysBlog filmed the intro and the Q & A. I did some sneaky dipping and with a pointer to the time marker, I'm pleased to say there was some Stephenage in Austin!

The IFC streamed interview (including the trailer at the start of part two) is here and Dread Central have a video interview here.

The praise went on all week, up to and beyond the screening on Wednesday. Finally, the film was voted as the audience's favourite Midnighter.....and before you tell me it was a small strand of the festival, it was rammed full of films everyone is waiting to see.

In Other More Standard Film Release Info News:The BBFC have given Attack the Block a '15' certificate and although it only lists the two minute trailer, a shorter tv spot has aired on E4 as well.It would be weird if I didn't include the trailer, wouldn't it?

The poster looks like the kind of thing worth investing in a double-sided and a big old light box for as Slash Film broke (or should that be 'Forward Slash'?)

Before the film had even come back from Snappy Snaps the rumour of a US remake or at the very least, subtitles was manufactured by lazy types with too much time on their hands. Whatever it takes to deliver the thing to an audience will work but how real is this actual threat in the first place?

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REMINDER SECTION

Reminder 1: Jon Hamblin's beautifully considered interview with Joe can be found in the digital and analogue version of SFX Magazine this month. Reminder 2: Little White Lies Issue 34 has a glow-in-the-dark cover with at least 19 lumins and lots of Attack the Block delights.

Reminder 3: There is an Official Attack the Block website which has the hopefully temporarily messy look since they backgroundedid the poster artwork.Reminder 4: There is an Attack the Block Facebook page thing.Reminder 5: There is a Twitter thing here.

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This began as a diversion inspired by Sally Grosart's wonderful Paper People and the sense of loss from Adam and Joe's radio show not being on air all through summer 2009. They have since taken a much longer break and I seem to have kept pottering about here.

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